Corpus Christi is a lovely city perched on a slight rise over the Gulf of Mexico. Industrial by purpose but completely and beautifully natural by design, it lay in a great, long bay with islands and sandbars too many to count. Just south of the city is North Padre Island. This barrier island runs from Corpus Christi all the way to the US/ Mexican border at Boca Chica, the mouth of the Rio Grande. It is a national treasure and a great and elegant necklace of an island.
The winds here are almost always strong and you will see acrobatic windsurfers trying to outdo themselves on any given day. During the spring migration time, birders of every stripe and nationality flock here to add sightings to their lists. It is a superior flyway and has been since before humans occupied the coast. Fishing is tremendous here and at various points along the coast and between certain islands, the local experts all have their favorite spots that produce dinner fare of unequaled taste and quality.
When we arrived here and took our Jeep out for drives along the beach of Padre Island we were amazed and appalled by the amount of trash on the beach. In places where there were no people on the beach, places that didn’t seem to be “party coves”, there was just as much trash as in areas by the more urbanized sections. What we also noticed is that the trash is almost entirely plastic...Plastic in every manufactured phase of plastic. If you can imagine or recount anything you know that is made of plastic...seriously, anything made of plastic...it is there on that 100+ miles of beach. Go to a hardware store and look at everything that is made out of plastic...It is there. Go to Wal Mart and again, look at everything that is made of plastic...it is there, on that beach.
So, why is that? Are the locals that messy?
Do tourists just throw everything they can on the beach?
What’s the cause?
The best that I can figure, there are two reasons for the trash that washes up there. First, when we arrived there terrific and fearsome Hurricane of the fall of 2017 had occurred just a few months prior. It is a decent bet that a lot of this trash was swept up in that storm and deposited on the beach. The area was still recovering from the hurricane and you could see mounds of trash by the side of the highways, shoved there to make room for cleanup until they could figure out where else to put it.
Second, we were told by the local turtle patrol, ( these are very eco-minded folks who patrol the beaches looking to help turtles during their egg laying days) that the currents emanating from the Mississippi River all wash up this shore. True to that point there were tons and tons of shells washing up at certain areas on the beach.
Now you have one EVENT, the hurricane, and one recurring event, the currents, combining to pollute the beach with every imaginable piece of plastic. It brings to mind what the oceans (plural) are dealing with from the hand of man. They say there are giant islands of plastic floating towards Hawaii. Perhaps the entire Mississippi flood plain and all its tributaries are carrying plastic to its eventual graveyard, The Gulf of Mexico. I ask myself, “ do I really do everything I can to recycle plastic? Do I really need to buy STUFF that is made of plastic? Is the Karma of plastic that we will all suffocate under its inexorable flood.